Mikogo – Mac Online Meeting App
I’ve been using Mikogo for a few things lately and I have to say it works pretty well. It’s free and easy, which are two pluses in my book. I’ve seen a couple of small hiccups in sessions, but overall it will stay up and running for an hour or two with several participants. Maximum participant load is 10, which is substantial and more than enough for any scenario I can dream up.
The biggest issue I have with the app is the atrocious icon. I whipped this up to replace it temporarily.
What I Use
I saw Mark’s list and was inspired to do the same. We have a fair amount of items in common, just swap his 9mm for my .9mm (mechanical pencil).
TextMate – I use very little of it’s power, but what I use works perfectly. I’ve tried all the others, but none ‘just work’ like TM
Transmit – Have used Transmit forever, had a few versions that stunk and I lost a lot of work and a lot of hair, but lately no issues
Quicksilver – launcher of all launchers. Transparent interaction makes it a keeper.
SuperDuper! – perfect imaging has saved me once and made for a perfectly cloned portable when I was out of the office for 5 days.
Photoshop CS4 – The mother-app of my workday. I use a ton of brushes, actions, tricks but haven’t yet found value in switching to Fireworks.
FontExplorer X Pro – Fonts need to be managed, just the way it goes. Pro gets you a lot of nice enhancements as well as support and backup. App integration is intuitive and easy, just install and forget it.
NetNewsWire – RSS reader, applescript-able.
LittleSnapper – At one point in the past I spoke with a Cocoa developer about building this app, so many features I had in mind they nail. Has some growing-up to do but overall excellent application.
TaskPaper – Clean and simple to-do and task management app. Dead simple.
MAMP Pro – Local development made simple. I prefer the GUI in the Pro version for setting hosts.
Colors – Snatch colors from anywhere on the screen. Super helpful.
iStockPhoto – The per-credit system is fabulous, if the Veer Marketplace takes off I may jump ship, but if last year is any indication the iStock folks will be seeing a lot of money from me in 2009.
Word-to-the-Press – I’m a fan. This app and the great people who work on it have been amking my life better for 5 years now.
Last.fm Scrobble – It’s very important to me that people know what I’m listening to. I’m a jerk like that.
AppZapper – We all install mistakes. This is the bad app morning after pill.
xScope – Onscreen ruler, loupe and dimensioning. Period.
Xyle Scope – Not as vital as it used to be with the Safari 4 dev tools and FF Web Dev toolbar, but this app is handy inspecting css quickly. If you find yourself thinking “wow what is the paragraph line-height on simplebits.com” this is a great app to have.
Pantone Huey Pro – Color correction, even for web work, is important and this little device works well for the cost. The Pro versions supports dual monitor profiles.
Pattern Tap – Huge collection of design tidbits from across the web.
Delicious – Where my links live. They were recently in a catastrophic fire at Ma.gnolia and were rescued and relocated to Delicious where they’ve been pretty happy.
Flickr – Photos live here.
Macbook – 2.16GHZ Core Duo, slow and old needs updated
Macbook Air – would love to sell this thing…just not sure what its replacement will be
Canon Scanner – Cheap Pixma printer/scanner combo but works well. Also have an old Epson 1200U with slide attachment when needed, which hasn’t been for years.
Gefen USB-DVI Adapter – allows me to run lid-closed dual monitor (up to 1680×1050) via USB – up to 4
Apple Wired Keyboard – Like having the extra ports and number pad, and the wireless was just too small
Nikon d40 – Technically my wife’s but it’s my gateway drug into photography. Love how well it works and how rugged and family-friendly it is.
Pentel .9mm (the yellow) – My father’s pencil of choice is also my pencil of choice. Tough to find, but worth it.
Moleskines – I have dozens of them, usually forget what’s in which, it’s a big mess. But the notebooks are nice. Go well with my pencils.
House Industries Mousepad – Love my super orange ampersand mousepad. Limited edition and no longer available. So take that.
iPhone (1st Gen) – Haven’t really had a reason to upgrade yet (phone and monthly charge).
AppleTV – Love it, need more reasons to turn it on though.
Macbook Air Wireless Issues
Looks like I’m not alone with my Air wireless frustrations. There seems to be a widespread issue with wireless connectivity. I can’t fathom how this was missed by Appl QA since this is a ‘wireless’ machine void of any other connectivity. This issue is particularly problematic considering the touted method to migrate is wirelessly. I hope Apple gets this resolved ASAP as it’s a huge pain and significantly effects overall usefulness of the product.
How I Know Twitter is Something Special
Here’s the key indicator that Twitter is different – it sucks. It really does, look at the list:
1) Unreliable – site is slow to moderately unusable to abhorrent almost all hours of the day. How slow is it? Bush can get through two whole Family Circus comics before the damn page paints.
2) Clients are the victim of API suckage – Twitterific and Snitter are both well designed, useful tools that live precariously at the edge of completely worthless and “Did that tweet ever get sent?” because they must rely on the service issues of the Twitter API
3) Web Interface is mean to me. It seems to find joy in never remembering my login. Ever.
4) SMS seems to kill my iPhone. I turned the flood gates on earlier in the week so I could find out how Merlin Mann likes his waffles no matter where I am, but that SMS deluge leaves my iPhone groggy, tired and makes the speaker cackle like a Christmas Witch. I ultimately had to bail on that.
So after all of this, I can’t seem to let it go. It’s a useful, verging on necessity at this point. And after all of this hassle I still come back to it. Just think of what it would be like if it worked well, for real. That would be cool, until then back to waiting for the damn pages to load and wishing Twitterific would stop filling up with my tweets and show me what other people are saying.
Vienna You’ve Ruined My Day
I spent several years as a usability engineer and in one session with a defense contractor, testing a complete rewrite of a big enterprise app that wasn’t going well, a participant told me that our products ruined her day. She dreaded her workday because she knew she had to come in and use our stuff. Ouch. That’s the nature of usability, of putting the user first. Somedays you get praise and hugs and somedays, well, somedays you realize how important it is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and walk around a bit. That product ruined her day because it worked fine functionally but the developers had never walked in her shoes, had never lived the life of a procurement specialist or supply-chain manager or dock foreman.
So while no one came and sat in my cube this week I’ll send Vienna feedback the only way I know how, by writing this. Vienna, if you’re listening, YOU RUIN MY DAY. I love your app, it’s free and easy and no-longer crashes incessantly. It has just what I need in a feed reader, but it lacks one crucial thing: empathy for it’s user. You’ve failed to walk in my shoes.
Exhibit A
This is the toolbar, under that damn gear icon is a host of features. Unfortunately they only exist in that menu, I can’t break them out as individual buttons. That means marking an entire feed “as read” requires click+drag+select+unclick every single time. It should just be *click* and done. Seriously this is an awful, awful bit if UI undesign trotted out as an enhancement. One of the downfalls of open-source is that criticizing an unpaid developer feels a little dirty, but it’s the truth. No one ever hesitated to tell me about issues with the interfaces I’ve designed, I guess it’s only fair I do the same.
Vienna You've Ruined My Day
I spent several years as a usability engineer and in one session with a defense contractor, testing a complete rewrite of a big enterprise app that wasn’t going well, a participant told me that our products ruined her day. She dreaded her workday because she knew she had to come in and use our stuff. Ouch. That’s the nature of usability, of putting the user first. Somedays you get praise and hugs and somedays, well, somedays you realize how important it is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and walk around a bit. That product ruined her day because it worked fine functionally but the developers had never walked in her shoes, had never lived the life of a procurement specialist or supply-chain manager or dock foreman.
So while no one came and sat in my cube this week I’ll send Vienna feedback the only way I know how, by writing this. Vienna, if you’re listening, YOU RUIN MY DAY. I love your app, it’s free and easy and no-longer crashes incessantly. It has just what I need in a feed reader, but it lacks one crucial thing: empathy for it’s user. You’ve failed to walk in my shoes.
Exhibit A
This is the toolbar, under that damn gear icon is a host of features. Unfortunately they only exist in that menu, I can’t break them out as individual buttons. That means marking an entire feed “as read” requires click+drag+select+unclick every single time. It should just be *click* and done. Seriously this is an awful, awful bit if UI undesign trotted out as an enhancement. One of the downfalls of open-source is that criticizing an unpaid developer feels a little dirty, but it’s the truth. No one ever hesitated to tell me about issues with the interfaces I’ve designed, I guess it’s only fair I do the same.
iPhoney Testing
Looking for a way to see how your web creations will look on iPhone ?
Check out iPhoney: iPhoney is not an iPhone simulator but instead is designed for web developers who want to create 320 by 480 (or 480 by 320) websites for use with iPhone. It gives you a canvas on which to test the visual quality of your designs.
Skitch-ified
I’ve been drooling over skitch for quite a while now, and thanks to Colin I can finally check it out. Rock.
Enable Safari 3 Web Inspector
Also info on how to use Safari Webkit2 and enabling debug menu on Windows.
Bashing iPhone Development
I’ve already seen a few posts bashing the fact that Apple isn’t opening the iPhone up to the world beyond Safari-based apps. Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz had a particularly long winded rant that seemed to boil down to this…no SDK means no wicked cool games on the iPhone…sheesh talk about missing the point. I don’t remember there being a revolt when the video iPod was released sans games, that’s because it’s a media player not a console, same goes for the iPhone. While I think it’s great that people expect sooo much from Apple, they also like to stray beyond sensible. Give it a chance, more importantly give the developers a chance. It’s a new platform and I’m sure there are some wickedly creative folks who can make some brilliant, iPhone-specific apps. Let’s give them a little time.
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